Anonymous posting is only appropriate when you are revealing sensitive employment related information about a firm, job, etc. You may anonymously respond on topic to these threads. Unacceptable uses include: harassing another user, joking around, testing the feature, or other things that are more appropriate in the lounge.

3L. I'll be mailing out for firms and stuff in the next 4-6 weeks. My school has fixed GPA cutoffs for Latin honors. I'm above the cum laude cutoff enough that I would have to massively fail 3L to lose it.

Would it be appropriate / douchey / completely irrelevant to say something like "I anticipate graduating cum laude in May 2013" in cover letters? Or will firms just not care at all?

kalvano wrote:3L. I'll be mailing out for firms and stuff in the next 4-6 weeks. My school has fixed GPA cutoffs for Latin honors. I'm above the cum laude cutoff enough that I would have to massively fail 3L to lose it.

Would it be appropriate / douchey / completely irrelevant to say something like "I anticipate graduating cum laude in May 2013" in cover letters? Or will firms just not care at all?

i don't see why'd they care about latin honors, which are arbitrarily determined by your school. firms will have their own cutoffs, all they need is your GPA.

kalvano wrote:3L. I'll be mailing out for firms and stuff in the next 4-6 weeks. My school has fixed GPA cutoffs for Latin honors. I'm above the cum laude cutoff enough that I would have to massively fail 3L to lose it.

Would it be appropriate / douchey / completely irrelevant to say something like "I anticipate graduating cum laude in May 2013" in cover letters? Or will firms just not care at all?

i don't see why'd they care about latin honors, which are arbitrarily determined by your school. firms will have their own cutoffs, all they need is your GPA.

I guess because I go to a TTT that just randomly decided with my class year to start enforcing a 3.0 curve for the first time in years, and anything I can do to set myself slightly apart is something I'd want to do.

Latin honors are awarded to graduates. You just shouldn't put it because you haven't gotten it yet.Same reason you wouldn't go around putting J.D. behind your name just because you're in your last semester and don't anticipate not graduating. You're going to be the only person still in law school with latin honors on the resume. It may go unnoticed or it may go heavily noticed. As in, "how is this person already awarded honors and he hasn't graduated?" You don't want them thinking anything else on your resume has been assumed, stretched, inflated, anticipated (except for actual graduation).

edit: I realized you said you would put that you anticipate getting latin honors and not actually put that you have them--but it's still inappropriate.imo.

Does your school rank? If so, a current class rank would be more helpful than listing hypothetical future honors.

One of the worst clerkship applications I ever saw had a "Publications" list that included works that had not even been submitted for publication, let alone accepted or published. Never anticipate an accomplishment, since things may not pan out the way you hope. It just makes you look shady.

Don't do it - too presumptuous. If I read it, I'd say to myself, "anticipates? I bet he anticipates I'll be impressed, and that he'll get this job too. He'd be wrong."

Besides, the GPA is what matters. If you are at that cutoff, your GPA is good. It won't help in the least to list your anticipated honors, and it will probably hurt. Don't count your chickens before they hatch, because when in Rome.